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Blair has tough week ahead
24/08/2003 19:01 - (SA)
London - Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior aides played a key role in the decision to identify a weapons adviser as the source of a BBC story saying the government had exaggerated Iraq's military threat, according to new documents released by a judicial inquiry.
The publication of the material on internet over the weekend led some British newspapers to predict on Sunday that Blair will face hard questions when he appears before the inquiry this week.
Blair "showed almost an obsessive interest in a story and its source," The Sunday Times said in an editorial headlined "Blair In The Dock."
The inquiry is investigating the suicide of senior British scientist David Kelly who committed suicide in July after he was identified as a source of the BBC report that said Blair's government had "sexed up" a dossier about Iraq's weapons before the war.
The dossier said Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction could be fired in 45 minutes.
Documents on internet
On Saturday, thousands of documents that had been submitted to the Hutton Inquiry into Kelly's death were published by the inquiry on internet, disclosing some inside information that had not been released in the first two weeks of the hearings.
For instance, a confidential cabinet office note reveals that Blair chaired a series of meetings at his Downing Street office during which it was decided to make public "that a source had come forward" and to issue a ministry of defence statement that gave clues to Kelly's identity.
Kelly, a former weapons inspector in Iraq who worked for the defence ministry, committed suicide in mid-July after he was publicly identified as a source for a May 29 BBC story.
The report quoted an unidentified source as claiming that the September dossier on Iraqi weapons was "transformed" in the weeks before publication to strengthen the allegations of an Iraqi threat. The government has denied it did that.
In one document released on Saturday, John Scarlett, chairperson of the joint intelligence committee, said there was "general agreement" within Downing Street that "the issue would inevitably become public."
"We are already open to criticism for not coming clean about the existence of a possible source," he added in the memo, following a meeting in Downing Street with Blair and other officials.
Blair's office has distanced itself from the decision to name Kelly, saying it was in the hands of the ministry of defence.
But the documents released on Saturday show that the press statement made by the defence ministry that provided clues to Kelly's identity was drafted in Downing Street and checked by Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell.
Campbell also told one journalist hunting the name of the source that he was on the wrong track.
Blair to testify Thursday
Blair is scheduled to give evidence to the inquiry headed by Lord Hutton, a top judge, on Thursday.
"The longer this inquiry goes on, the more e-mails appear, the more documents appear, the more damning evidence appears," Jeremy Corbyn, a lawmaker in Blair's Labor Party, told Sky News in London. "... Now I suspect Downing Street has been involved from the very beginning."
The claims that the September dossier was "sexed up" and Kelly's suicide have become the biggest crisis of Blair's six years in office.
Blair urged sceptical Britons to back war because Saddam posed a serious danger and vehemently denies exaggerating the threat.
In a new poll, 67% of those questioned said the government had deceived Britons about Iraqi weapons.
Of those who voted for Blair's Labour Party in the 2001 elections, 62% said they felt deceived, according to the survey by polling firm ICM for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
58% of those questioned said they trust Blair less since Kelly's death and 61% said they believed the BBC report that the government exaggerated evidence on Iraq, compared to 23% who said that was untrue.
ICM polled 658 people between Thursday and Saturday. The survey had a margin of error of 4%.
The Hutton Inquiry website |
